Workplace Gender Equality Agency Reporting

Posted on 25 March 2024 | by Allan Hall

WGEA Reporting or Pay Secrecy

Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) has published the 2022-2023 median gender pay gaps for private sector businesses with 100 or more employees, encompassing both base salary and total remuneration.

Some notable findings include:

30% of employers have a median gender pay gap between the target range of -5% and +5%
62% of median employer gender pay gaps are over 5% and in favour of men
The remaining (8%) are less than -5% and in favour of women
Across all employers, 50% have a gender pay gap of over 9.1%.

The above findings suggest that there is still a large gap between gender pay equality with only 30% of businesses within the target range. This is largely demonstrated by the statistic that 62% of employers are currently paying men over 5% more than women across the business.

Who needs to complete an annual WGEA report?

All private sector businesses with 100 or more employees are required to complete their WGEA report between 1 April and 31 May of each year. The report must provide data from the previous year for the date ranges of 1 April through to 31 March.

For more information about who needs to report and how to complete the WGEA report, please click:

WGEA EMPLOYER PORTAL

Even if your company has fewer than 100 employees, it is important to be proactive in identifying potential inequalities within the workplace. Conducting a payroll audit and internal salary benchmarking are important steps to take.

How does pay secrecy impact gender pay inequality?

Pay secrecy can play a big part when it comes to gender inequality in the workplace. Pay secrecy, where employees are prohibited from discussing their pay, hampers transparency and can conceal gender-based pay disparities. For this reason, changes have been made from 7 December 2022 to remove the permittance of pay secrecy clauses within contractual agreements. This change aims to advocate for transparency in pay practices to ensure that all employees, regardless of gender, are fairly compensated for their work.

MORE INFORMATION ON PAY SECRECY

Need HR Assistance?

At Allan Hall HR, we have a team of experienced HR consultants. To learn more about our services, please click here. Alternatively, please feel free to call us on 1300 916 764 or contact us to discuss any questions you may have in regard to WGEA Reporting or Pay Secrecy.

audits, benchmarks, employees, employer, HR Services, human resources, payroll, remuneration, reporting

5 tips to recruit quality employees in the current job market

Posted on 25 August 2022 | by Allan Hall

Attracting and retaining suitable talent—

With global labour shortages presenting huge challenges for employers, many of our clients have reported significant difficulties during the past 6-12 months in attracting and retaining suitable employees.

Our team at Allan Hall HR has seen a large increase in requests for support in recruitment during this time and has put together some tips to help you recruit in the current market.

The employment situation in Australia

Whilst the extent of the labour shortage differs across regions and industries, with healthcare, manufacturing and supply chain industries experiencing the greatest impact, it is undeniably currently one of the biggest challenges employers are facing globally.

The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in the following factors affecting the labour market:

migrants returning to their home countries,
a reduction in available international graduates, and
border closures resulting in fewer working-holiday visas.

Australia is currently experiencing a record low unemployment rate of 3.5% (ABS, July 2022). Due to the labour and skill shortage, wage costs in some sectors, such as IT, are rising between 20% to 50%, with employers having to boost salaries to attract and retain staff.

As a result, the number of jobs advertised has significantly increased. ANZ job ads data for April 2022 revealed that the number of job ads was up 26.3% from a year earlier at 242,536. They were 57.3% higher than the pre-pandemic level in February 2020 and SEEK data shows they remain significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels.

Five things employers can do to attract great candidates

To help you stand out from the crowd and attract and retain quality staff in this current market, our HR team offer the following tips:

1 Focus on your Employee Value Proposition

Distinguish yourself from your competitors and be clear on your selling points to attract new talent. How do you differ from other organisations and what benefits do you offer? What are your points of difference and why would a prospective employee want to work for you? For example, do you offer a hybrid working model / flexibility to work from home? Do you pay over the market rate for the position? Do you have an outstanding culture that current employees value? Does the company provide clear, defined opportunities for career progression?

Ensure you retain a strong focus on your current employees and offer and communicate these aspects to your existing employees to remind them of the key benefits of continuing to work within your organisation.

2 Deploy targeted search strategies

For many roles in the current market, it is now rare to simply advertise and have people apply. It is important to identify where the top talent is currently working and proactively reach out to prospective employees from these organisations with the key selling points from your Employee Value Proposition.

Utilise your network and professional networking tools, such as LinkedIn and other social media platforms.

Encourage existing employees to help you with your search for top talent and consider devising an employee referral program to incentivise this.

3 Understand salary expectations in the current market

Salary benchmarking and reviewing current remuneration ensures your offering is competitive to the current market. Salary benchmarking is a useful tool in attracting new talent and reducing staff turnover.

4 Grow your own talent

Employing graduates or school leavers is a great way to grow talent specific to your business needs. Recent graduates can bring an exciting and fresh perspective to your workplace.

5 Consider engaging recruitment specialists with access to a broad database of potential candidates and targeted sourcing tools

Our Allan Hall HR team have a team of highly skilled recruitment, search and marketing specialists who are supported by our HR consultants, to apply a holistic approach to your HR and recruitment needs. We can assist with recruitment activities across Australia including:

creating an employee value proposition
salary benchmarking
premium and targeted candidate search
employee referral schemes
psychometric testing of potential candidates to help in your hiring decisions and ongoing development of employees
staff retention strategies
structured onboarding support

As per your tax and accounting support at Allan Hall, you only pay for the time spent, together with any direct advertising costs.

Our recruitment team at Allan Hall HR would love to discuss your needs, and how we can best assist your organisation. We are equipped with a range of resources and strategies suited to the current labour market; including a solely dedicated headhunting team, premium-level access to targeted recruitment and social media platforms including LinkedIn, and a targeted graduate recruitment team.

For more information, please get in touch with our friendly team at Allan Hall HR at [email protected] or call 02 8978 3743.

Employers’ Biggest Challenges for 2022

Posted on 3 December 2021 | by Allan Hall

3 Tips for Employers

Attracting and retaining good employees has always been a big challenge for businesses, however we now see it looming as a major obstacle for employers in 2022.

Business is looking to boom, but you will need the right team to be able to take advantage of the opportunities.

Why now?

As we come out of nearly two years of unprecedented business disruption and uncertainty due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, a number of factors have combined to produce an extraordinary set of circumstances, including:

business confidence has surged as we come out of lockdown and economic activity is rebounding quickly
the Reserve Bank has increased its forecast GDP growth for 2022, to 5.5%
recruitment activity is now nearly 50% above pre-pandemic levels and job advertisements are now at historical highs
at the same time, unemployment is historically low, and there are now serious and persistent shortages of skilled labour across the country, with trades and technical areas particularly in short supply
with easing concerns over COVID-19, a number of employees are taking the opportunity to re-evaluate their careers and how they want to work in the future, and it has been predicted that this trend will develop further next year as the economy takes off. This phenomenon has now come to be known as, “the Great Resignation”.

As you wind down from 2021 and before the new year gets into full swing, we recommend that you get ahead of the game by following these three tips for employers.

3 tips to attract and retain good employees in 2022

Tip 1: Conduct an employee satisfaction/engagement survey

Take the time to understand how satisfied your employees are with their work and how engaged they are with your business. Employees who are satisfied and engaged, rarely leave, even when offered more money. Consider undertaking an employee survey to help you better understand your employees’ thoughts and feelings and identify any “imminent flight risks”.

Tip 2: Review your employee remuneration, benefits and rewards

With surging economic activity, a booming recruitment market, and skilled labour in short supply, there is likely to be pressure on increasing wages and salaries, particularly as they have remained flat for a number of years. Many employers are also looking at new and different benefits and rewards to make their offer more attractive than their competitors. It is suggested that all employers take the opportunity now to review salaries, wages, benefits and rewards to ensure you remain competitive and well-positioned to retain your valued staff.

Tip 3: Proactively source quality talent

Spend some time forecasting your labour requirements for 2022 and determine if you are likely to need additional skilled staff. The tightening labour market over recent months has seen the number of applicants per job advertised, decline steadily, and clients report that quality candidates are becoming increasingly hard to find. This means that if you are in the market for staff in 2022, you will most likely need to be more creative in how you find the “right” people for your business, and you should consider seeking professional assistance to proactively source the highest quality talent.

Our highly skilled and experienced team at Allan Hall HR have assisted our clients in all these areas, such as engagement surveys, salary reviews and quality sourcing and recruiting of talent.

Please contact us if you would like to discuss your current business situation and people needs. We would be excited to help you prepare for the year ahead with the right team in place to seize all the opportunities coming your way!

Contact Allan Hall Human Resources in Brookvale